I understand the changes to Bronze and Silver; they make perfect sense.  However, I think Gold should be looked at tier-by-tier, not as a whole.  I can maintain G4 week in and week out, but some of my clan mates that are in G1 and G2 are facing teams more powerful than the teams I'm facing in G4.  For example, one clan mate with a Player Power of ~1M and an Arena team power ~135k is facing opponents with a Player Power of 4.5M and up with Arena team powers over 250k.  The balance at the lower tiers is incredibly off.

I was G1 for months, got knocked down to B4, made it back up to S3 and now I am back down to B4.  It is discouraging.  In most games -  and I've been playing games since Infocom designed ZORK in 1980 - the player is supposed to be REWARDED as they progress, not punished.  I watch videos, I try to do the math, I swap out gear when I can but at the end of the day I am just simply frustrated.  I love the game and I will give the new changes to Arena a second chance, but I am not happy about how many of us have had to watch our rankings go down.  Another kick in the teeth is getting 3* gear after getting 5* epic and legendary gear when our tiers were higher.  That doesn't help.  It's trash gear.  I played Arena in WOW and The Secret World and am overall an intelligent player but I can't fight moving algorithms that go against why people play RPGs in the first place.

Why is account power looked at in the first place?  It does not adequately measure how strong an account is.  Plarium believed that my account became less powerful when I took Brogni to 6 stars but became more powerful as I fused common champs to become food champs.  You are basically saying to completely ignore faction wars and don't keep any new champs (in a champion aquisition game) until you have finished progress missions and updated your great hall or YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!  It makes no sense.  If you must have something to base arena matchups on, great hall progression would be an infinitely more useful number than player power.  It is still a really bad idea compared to just implementing an elo system like every other game that I've played has managed to do, but it would be way better than account power.  I mean, 98% of my battles (and I'm about to hit day 100) have been determined by speed and yet speed has a very low effect on "power" as defined by plarium.  It is a horrendous measurement of real power in the game.

Also, based on the stats that YOU (Plarium) provided during those 2 years of Raid videos, there is a major player retention issue.  The state of the arena has been an issue to every other new player I've talked about.  Expand the arena to 3x as many tiers but keep Bronze, Silver, and Gold at the bottom.  Then all of the good accounts will rise and newer players will have a chance to learn the arena, to update their great hall, and to complete progress missions.  Or remove great hall development and progress missions from the arena although I know you won't do that even though you don't seem to comprehend how broken the current system is.

Please do not force us to do arena for champion fusions until arena is fixed. I couldn't fuse Brogni because I couldn't get out of Bronze arena and 455 points when stuck in bronze arena is impossible. Had there been no arena events I would have gotten him.

If you are in Bronze then no more than 50 points should be required.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

thanks for taking a look at this, the only concern I have is that you are tweaking for noobs but they are not the only people affected, I took a break from the game and found myself in bronze, my progression was solid in other areas of the game so my accn power level is relatively high for my arena rank, 669k in bronze 3. as such I'm now against fully stacked arena teams which would be fine but the great hall rewards mean that noobs ultimately get more progression as they keep their power level low, so when and if I reach a higher bracket I hit a higher progression of great hall... these changes appear to be a double down of a system that is broken. remove the accn power limit, and base it on great hall and arena team power. easy. this would be a far more natural arena progression. otherwise ill have to accn power dump by removing my artifacts from heroes and removing my total number of heroes from my vault.. dumb.

My best arena team is 2 six-star rares and 2 six-star epics. A month ago I could reach bronze 3. Now I can barely get out of bronze 1. Even in bronze 1 I can only beat a minority of opponents, because most of my opponents have multiple legendaries and often team higher power as well.

So essentially you've punished me for playing the game and ranking up more champions by making my opponents much, much harder. That's ridiculous. It's fine if my progress is slow, but you're making it go backwards.

And what you are saying in this update is you plan to KEEP making it go backwards, because you're STILL going to punish me for having more player power. Just maybe not as much.

And to make it worse, you're now going to make my rating go down more slowly when I get attacked. Please, can my rating go down MORE when I get attacked? Can you reset it to 900 every ten minutes? Can I please be attacked and beaten more often? Is it so much to ask that I can find some teams I have a chance of beating in the lowest league that there is?

I suggested before you match based upon potential arena power using ratings in arena for champs in roster.  This would address the Plarium concern if player just not maximizing their roster, but address the flaws in total player power that everyone has already posted about.  If I have Trunda and Hegemon sitting in the vault, I shouldn't be helped because I put a poor team in arena.  However, if I have dupe epics and rares filling up my roster, I shouldn't be matched against players who have a slim roster but full of top arena champs.

On a side note, I saw that you are fixing Brogni's proc of ally artifact sets.  We all just put a ton of effort into getting him, so if you are opening him up to fix that, why not fix the fact that his skills say that he reflects 25% of damage to shield back on attacker, but that is only working in the game if the shield is not fully taken down.  For example, if 30k shield and attacker does 40k hit, there is NO reflection instead of the 7.5k we would expect.  Also, his reflect damage doesn't count against Fire Knight shield.  Skill reads the same as champs like Runic Warder and Fellhound so why doesn't this work?  These both look like bugs so why fix the one that is our favor but not fix the two that aren't?  Please be complete in your fix!

i'm in g4, but is nof fun this blody fight for survie...

my son is in s2... that a horror...

any way is not tun, not enjoyable...

problem is if you have few right champ...

We rely on account power for matchmaking because it is the most flexible parameter, useful to match roughly compatible players from the pool of a wide range of opponents with varying activity and experience. Many other criteria are less reliable in that regard. For instance, though the status of the Great Hall gives a good idea of what a player has achieved at some point, it doesn't imply that at the present moment, the Great Hall reflects the status of the account - it may be that the player just neglected to upgrade the Great Hall for some time. Thus, being a very formidable player, they will show up for much weaker opponents. 

Of course, as many of you pointed out, our current approach to the matchmaking (with account power being an important but not the only factor) has some limitations and drawbacks. That's why we keep monitoring data concerning this area of the game. 

Thank you for the feedback! Let's see how things change after the changes described are activated: there are reasons to believe that things will get a little bit less harsh on the Arena. 

Oh gee, where to even start. Not that it even matters, if you haven't listened so far you're certainly not going to start doing it now. Still, might make me feel a bit better to vent, even if it's into the void.

"...it is the most flexible parameter..."

Well, I'll give you that one. I mean, it can mean literally anything, so sure, it's flexible. Of course, you can also replace "flexible" with "inaccurate", and it'd still be true.

"...useful to match roughly compatible players from the pool of a wide range of opponents with varying activity and experience"

No, it's not. It's useful for matching players with comparable power levels, nothing else. What that power translates to differs wildly, and activity and experience has nothing whatsoever to do with it, and compatibility certainly doesn't. What matters in arena matchmaking is arena performance. Every single game I can think of with matchmaking does this. I have yet to see a single even remotely valid reason for why this game couldn't. The only possible excuse I can think of involves the arena being so fundamentally broken that you've explicitly chosen to do it this way in order to hide it for as long as possible rather than actually put some effort into fixing it, or accepting the fact that your idea of "competitive" is nonsensical and setting aside those delusions in favor of creating something that is actually fun.

"For instance, though the status of the Great Hall..." etc.

Well, I agree that the upgrade level is not an accurate representation. That being said, it's still orders of magnitude better than player power, because at least it actually reflects some aspect of your potential power, whereas player power could just as well be from filling up your vault with common champions for food.

"Of course, as many of you pointed out, our current approach to the matchmaking (with account power being an important but not the only factor) has some limitations and drawbacks."

You don't say? Such as literally punishing you for playing the game for any other reason than the arena? This isn't "some" drawbacks, it's literally a system that counteracts the fundamental principle of the entire game. You have created a system in which I actively avoid keeping champions around, and keep champions unequipped because they may only be useful in one area of the game where I would instead accept suboptimal teams in order to maintain my arena ranking and give some semblance of efficiency in getting medals for the great hall that even in the best-case scenario will take years to complete. I long for the day I can maintain a place in and win a reasonable amount of matches in gold (I'm able to get there at the moment, but winning matches is a full-time job), but not because I really want the bonuses from the tier or the gold medals particularly, but because it means I could finally, finally, escape from this horrendous matchmaking system and actually start enjoying other aspects of the game such as faction wars.

I don't know which prospect I find more disturbing. That you have no clue what you're doing, or that you do and that this is what you actually wanted.

A flexible stat, that really shows the power somebody has in arena, that is high for people with a ton of arena victories and low for people who lost most of their matches, a stat really indicating arena power. Let me think about it.... Arena rating!

How does account power show any actual account power?  I am doing the champion training event so I can watch as I pull 40 green shards, get all commons and uncommons, see my power go way up and then as I constantly feed them into other champs until the point that I can make a massive upgrade to my account.  However, according to "player power" I get stronger when I get useless food champs but I get weaker as I rank upgrade good champs.  It makes zero sense.  Speed is the #1 determining factor of the vast majority of battles and yet it barely counts towards "player power" compared to some of the other stats.  It might be "variable" but it isn't useful.  I agree that great hall is inadequate but it is infinitely better than account power.  All of those old accounts which were built when you were less generous with space for champs (it cost more to expand, didn't have as large a total space, etc) will have less account power than a new account with minimally geared champs for faction wars but will have way stronger actual champs.  Heck, active time in game would be a better system than account power.  Still very flawed but not as flawed as account power.

I understand wanting to use player power becuase of how flexible it is, but there are more issues than benfits to that (I think) especially for players like me who are trying to collect and level up for faction wars. If you make the mistake of keeping champions and leveling them up for faction wars then you wind up rapidly increasing your player power while your main arena team only progresses slowly. 

The way it is now makes us feel punished for collecting and leveling champions. 

I think the power should be pulled off of your top (5, 10 or whatever) champions and you should be placed into a bracket from there. for example: if your top 10 champions gives you 100 power (to keep it simple) then you are in the 0-100 bracket, once you hit 101 power then you fight people in the 101-200 bracket. 

It could be like this for Bronze only, so you can keep your top champions weak to get through bronze but once you hit Silver you're going to get slaughtered. At least you would be able to fill the Great Hall and get through the missions. 

There are a lot of things in arena that make the experience the players have very bad. And you know from my posts in the Game Discussion Forum, for example here, that I'm not the typical "I'm in Bronze 1, Plarium is so bad!"-crying-player. But I still don't like some things in arena.

1.) Sandbagging (up to a certain point) is usefull. Your announced balance adjustments will not change that.

There is a "natural" limit to sandbagging, as players that could earn Gold medals will not go down to Bronze voluntary and earn Bronze medals instead. But players that are in Gold 4 may go back to Gold 1, change their defense back to their real team when they reach that stage (to prevent to fall into Silver). They earn easy victories in offense fights and can't be beaten in defense, as they have a Gold 4 team in Gold 1. With the victories they get they climb up again to be in Gold 4 when the ranking period ends.

Sandbagging is to good in your arena, because defensive wins don't bring any price (exept arena points), but offensive wins bring arena points and medals. Your arena system rewards sandbagging. If defensive wins would give anything usefull, players wouldn't do it. I think, arena defense wins should give medals as a reward too. Maybe less than offense wins, let's say 1/3 of a medal per defensive win (I think the game could count that and give you a medal after 3 defensive victories), but their should be any price for defensive wins to take away the reason why players do sandbagging. If you don't get anything for having a good defensive team, but get a price for offense wins, there is a clear nudge to do sandbagging into lower tiers. Player J posted a pic in one of the innumerable arena threads in Game Discussion, where somebody with a Platinum avatar was in Gold 1. Maybe that player (not Player J, he just posted the pic) had to leave Platinum by the result of real fights. But that would bring him into Gold 4. Do you believe he got to Gold 1 because his team is to weak? From Platinum? Of course he made that way to Gold 1 voluntary.

In addition to this nudging into Sandbagging your actual arena does, it's to easy to do so. Just set one lvl 1 champ as def team, go down to stage you want to reach, set your real team back in defense. 

You could prevent that with a checkpoint system: Players can't go down more than one league per arena period. If you started in Gold 4, you can fall down only to Gold 3 in your actual period. If you are in Gold 3 at the end, you start there in the next period and could fall into Gold 2. That would prevent top players from sandbagging in lower tiers. They want to stay in the best league they can reach at the end of the ranking period for the reward chest, so no Gold 4 player would go to Gold 1 anymore voluntary. He would have to end in Gold 3 in one period and in Gold 2 in the next to do so. Nobody would like to miss two top tier reward chests. Sandbagging would be limited to go down one tier at all. Still bad enough, but the difference in power (real power, not account power) from Gold 4 to Gold 3 is not as big as from Gold 4 to Gold 1.

As a bonus, such a checkpoint would prevent that other players, that don't go down voluntary, but by just losing their fights, would fall to fast, what actually happens and is discouraging a lot of players.  

2.) Account Power shouldn't influence matchmaking. Quintinar and EGDNIT allready mentioned why. In short: The hero collecting game punishes you for collecting heros. 

What about using the actual Teampower of the Arenateam from the last say 20 to 100 Battles? Plus the Ranking in the Arena. Plus the Battles lost/won. This determines the Arenapower of an Player. 

And yes the great Hall is alos a good marker of the Progress in the Arena. I know of nobody who is negletting the Great Hall, because the Stats are an impact on the whole Game. Not just Arena.

The Playerpower is not even a remotely qulifying Marker of how one is performing in the Arena. 

If I have  a great ammount of champs in my voult but not using them, or have some  leveled and equiped fpr Faction Wars, Dungeons, etc. 

Or have a lot of Food Champs piling up, because I get ready for an Fusionevent. 

That is what is determining my Playerpower. Not my actual power for the Arena.

Teampower is a very bad way for matchmaking actually, because it's totally broken by itself. 

A high resistance on champs leads to a high teampower, while speed affects teampower only a little bit. So speednuking teams, that go "all in" to win the fight in the first turn and have only atk, acc, critdam, critrate and speed as stats on their items and literally no bonus to hp, def or resistance, will have a very low team power. A Gold 4 speed team will have lower teampower than a team with a defensive tactic (what allways includes high resistance to avoid debuffs) in Bronze.

When is the proposed changes

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ge in arena happening? come on plarium. i have been dropping arena levels for weeks now. We were promised an arena matchmaking update. when is this supposed to happen? 2 months ago I was collecting gold coins in gold 1 and 2 lvls. now I can barely survive in silver 1. what makes it more frustrating is I need gold coins to progress for my arbiter missions. I spend alot of money on this game and I love evrything about it except the arena ever since it was changed earlier this year. at this rate i will never advance in my arbiter missions and eventually just move on to another game. cant u at least change it so the great hall can be farmed in more than 1 area or something? look at these teams I have to beat in silver 1. 

I  was  in  gold  4.  I  am  now  in Silver  2  the  same  caliber  of  opponents  in  gold  4  are  also  in  silver.  Your system  sucks  and  its  sad  its taken  this  long  for  you  to  fix  it  or even consider it. Im  guessing  mainly  because  youre  making  money  while  screwing  your  customers  to  make  a  few  dollars.  Whille  dumbasses  telling  people  to  learn  to  play  as  theyve  wasted  hundred  or  thousands  to  maintain  a  PVP  status

yep... is no metere where you are now. it look like is metere where you was...

i was G4 now G2... and fight with pple wtih 250-300k power. and 3500 poinst (s othey are in g4 at least)... us system say i'm good eugnof to figh with them :) that's mean aren tiere have no sens. if system know beter how good you are...